This week's Community Engagement Challenge has the theme - Hidden Gems. It involves showcasing a card or a strategy that does not often get in the spotlight. Well, I've decided to showcase a battle featuring Heloise the Hollow not because she's a underrated card but because there are only 100 copies of her in circulation overall and that makes her a rare card to spot on the battlefield by default. I am fortunate to be the owner of mint #41 of the regular foils, so she's definitely a hidden gem that can often be seen played by me.
The situations I use Heloise in are several. Sometimes I use her in battles where I feel I will surprise my enemy but I always need to have the ability to fill the rest of the line-up with "bodies" which have the sole goal to support Heloise's resurrections, so the mana of such battles needs to be at least around 30. I usually use either Risqruel Drath (both abilities - either True Strike or Redemption) work great or Tofu, where I usually throw a Divine Shield on her. I also often use her in the Death line-up I use to counter the Hippo spam, which is also the battle I will showcase in this post, there I usually pair her with Lorkus, Craniax and Tasoshi Drakamoto.
Finally I also use her specifically when the modifiers of the battle are Aim True and/or Unprotected.
Now, before looking at the battle, let's have a look at Heloise and her abilities at different levels (mind you while she comes maxed right out of the box, she is still playable at lower league levels where she, of course, loses some of her abilities).
Heloise is a dual-element card - Death/Earth. At max level she has the following stats: 8 Melee Attack, 7 HP, 3 Speed, 0 Armor. She has the following abilities Taunt (Draws the attacks of enemy units. Does not affect Reach, Scattershot, Wingbreak, or enemy units in the first position), Opportunity, Spite ( When defeated, 100% chance to counterattack), Soul Siphon (As long as there is a non-Weary allied unit, self-resurrects with 100% armor and 50% of max health, rounded down. All magic debuffs are removed, and all magic buffs are reapplied. Inflicts Weary on the non-Weary allied unit with the highest health and reduces their health by 50%, rounded up) and Last Word (Provides immunity to Final Rest (allied and enemy abilities that trigger on defeat cannot activate)). Heloise did not have Last Word initially but with the introduction of Craniax and his signature ability - Final Rest (Allied and enemy abilities that trigger on defeat cannot activate), the team deemed it necessary to boost Heloise a bit a make her a viable play option when Craniax is on the board. This is also why you'll see the two of them, on the same team, in the battle I'm about to showcase. As for playing Heloise at lower league levels, she's not that great to be honest. At level one she has 7 Melee Attack, 3 Speed, 0 Armor and 4 HP as well as Taunt and Opportunity in the abilities department. At level 2 she has 1 more HP, and an additional ability - Spite. At level 3 she gains an additional Melee Attack point for a total of 8, as well as 1 HP point for a total of 6.
I was expecting my opponent to play a stacked "hippo" line-up so I decided to counter his hippo strategy by using Craniax, Heloise, Tasoshi, Mantaroth, Gramel the Hunger and Arachne Weaver. The battle has only one modifier and it is Aim True, which greatly helps Heloise deliver every single retaliation when she dies with 100% accuracy. However, the enemy team still has a lot of armor so that's not the only condition needed for a win to be achieved. Craniax does most of the work by shutting down the ability of the enemy team to get buffed 3 times by Moribund Arrowbait and her Bloodline Tribute ability
Fast forward to the last round of the battle. As you can see Heloise has died a total of 5 times but she's still on the battlefield while the enemy team has been wiped out.
